Hypericum gentianoides
Orangegrass (Hypericum gentianoides) is a annual forb that buffers your team where it is native and attacks where it has become invasive.
Orangegrass is an annual forb — a very fast, very soft weed that relies on speed and replacement. It is native to eastern North America, where it plays a defensive buffer, and has become invasive in Europe and South America, where it fights as an attacker.
Its kit unlocks in three stages. Its starter attack, Summer Crush (unlocked at level 1, 2 Sun), deals 32 as a native or 32 as an invader: A season's growth in one shove — the foe is pinned. Its once-per-battle ability, Ecesis (level 25, free), is pure utility: Establishes fast: heal 35% and gain speed. Its advanced attack, Arrowseed (level 40, 6 Sun), deals 38 native or 39 invasive: A barbed seed goes in first and festers.
These are the always-on traits this card actually keeps, and the level each one arrives at (a plant draws at most one trait per growth stage). From level 10, Duff is a genuine always-on defense — its effective DEF rises by half the combined DEF of its living benched ruderal allies (annual-forbs, grasses, aquatic plants, and bulbs), and fades as those allies faint. From level 68, Reseed replaces it on death: when it is knocked out a fresh Seedling token steps up in its place.
On the field it draws on field gear to shore up its weaknesses. With little natural armor it leans on amendments that add DEF or on healing gear to offset its fragility. Native and invasive copies want different gear — the native buffer favors defensive and healing picks, the invader favors damage and speed.
Read at level 40, where every move is unlocked, it holds 103 health and 25 attack as a native, with 2 DEF. That is thin armor, so it takes close to full damage from any real attacker; its defense is its health pool and its tricks, not its DEF. Its retreat costs 16 Sun. On tempo it opens at 32 initiative (which orders the first turn) and cruises at 51 speed (which orders every turn after). It is slow off the mark but relentless afterward — it often cedes the opening hit, then out-paces the foe from turn 2. As a native it carries a 15% health cushion (103 versus 89 as an invader), and while benched it projects a green overshield bar onto your active plant, sized by how threatened it is. As an invader its attack identity is built from how widely it has spread, so its 27 attack outstrips its native 25; it pays for that aggression with self-damage to its own bench on every damaging attack, and concedes 2 prizes when knocked out.
Grown to level 100, its health swells to 190 and its attack to 46, but its armor stays low (3 DEF) — it never becomes a wall, just a bigger version of the same soft plant. Retreat rises to 33 Sun as the older plant grows more rooted, and its once-quick tempo has sunk to a sliver — it goes late in turn order now. Maturing buys it raw bulk and hitting power; it costs it the speed edge it had as a seedling.
In the succession type chart, Orangegrass's category (annual forb) belongs to the Ruderal group. Ruderal, Competitor, and Specialist form a wheel: Ruderal hits Specialist plants (succulents, conifers, ferns, and epiphytes) for 1.5× damage, and takes 1.5× from Competitor plants (perennial herbs, vines, shrubs, and broadleaf trees), resisting each the other way at about two-thirds. The off-wheel Weird categories are neutral both ways.
A fragile card whose appeal is tempo and its self-replacing Reseed. It earns coins fine in single-player but needs a bench behind it. As an invader in Europe and South America it hits a little harder, but never enough to make it a heavyweight. It is not a coin-earner through fertilizer — feeding it any nutrient banks 1.25× experience rather than coins, so its off-battle value is leveling and family-tree collection. On the power curves below, it fights as a fast skirmisher until about level 29 as a native (level 34 as an invader), after which its growing bulk and attack take over from its fading speed — a shift in which edge dominates, not a sign it is weaker when grown.
Leveling trades speed for power. A plant’s tempo (SPD + INI, the turn-order edge) fades as it grows, while its power (HP + ATK + DEF, net of the rising Sun cost to retreat) climbs. The crossover is the level where power overtakes tempo: below it the plant is a fast skirmisher, above it a heavyweight. Shown for each stance this plant can actually hold — native adds a HP cushion, invasive an attack edge, neutral neither — with the card at its crossover and fully grown at Lv 100.